For those wondering about the loss of multliplayer connectivity in SotS1, we haven't heard a peep from Gamespy, but we have found out the following (see link below);

SotS1's multiplayer between 2006 and now was due to an agreement between the defunct Lighthouse Interactive and Gamespy. Kerberos and SotS1 players are therefore affected by this shut-down, but we have no direct business recourse in the matter.

We are going to have to put our heads together on this one and see what our options are.

It should be pointed out that SotS2 MP is fine, as we moved to Steam matchmaking weeks back, due to what we thought was an unrelated matter, but in retrospect...

Also, you can still play MP SotS1 using direct connection in the game, or using any one of a handful of third-party apps that create a virtual LAN set-up for games (we're not endorsing one in particular, or even in general, but it is an option.) For direct connect to work, host needs to start their game in LAN mode, then other can join direct connect. It will not work in Internet mode (thanks to Gamespy's dead corpse getting in the way.)

A company I won't name has a few games which can no longer be played online. Heck, one of them doesn't even have their stat tracking and rank unlocks anymore. It practically wiped out the community overnight.

Would there be any possible plans of migrating SOTS Prime over to steam netcode?

Rossinna-Sama wrote:Would there be any possible plans of migrating SOTS Prime over to steam netcode?

Middleware layers like this are usually not hot-pluggable.

And due to the man-hour cost of making such changes, it is likely the best recourse at this point is to ask Paradox if they would be prepared to fund the change from the no longer working middleware to another, along with any other fixes / changes, as a final Update for SotS Prime.

silvaril wrote:Love is Love, God is God and I am still Living a Lifetime

Disclaimer:The views of any individual may not necessarily represent those of "God"(tm)

Dev @ Blue's News wrote:Use steam and things like this can be avoided. I think GFWL was in existence even back then, so even that piece of crap could have been used and probably gotten a kickback from MS.

Until 5 years ago, Gamespy was where Steam is today when it comes to multiplayer server backend services. Gamespy's master server had extremely high availability, scaled well into the hundreds of thousands of simultaneous clients, and their SDK was simple and easy to integrate into most games. When games like Sniper Elite were made, this was by far the best choice for a 3rd party server browser backend.

Furthermore at the time the idea of Gamespy changing hands was right up there with Gabe selling Valve. It just wasn't on the radar - there was no reason for Gamespy's owners to ever do it as the server backend service always turned a reasonable profit.

Of course in 2012 Gamespy isn't used nearly as much as it was back then. The core technology is sound, but it's archaic; it was designed in the era of Quake, optimized for arena shooter style dedicated servers, complete with heartbeats and people browsing lists of servers to find what they're looking for. It never properly evolved to handle P2P matchmaking (a something foisted on to PC users by console ports), and the lack of ancillary services (chat, etc) only widen the gap. Steamworks has effectively supplanted Gamespy in this day and age due to the combination of services Steam can offer and the vastly superior P2P matchmaking. Or to put that another way, with game companies doing so few native PC games and so many PC ports, these days they wanted a service that closely emulated Live/PSN to ease the porting, and that's something Gamespy couldn't do as well as Steam.

At this point Glu is straight up trying to extort game developers. Before the sale the going rate on something like Sniper Elite would be in the 4 digits; with the common Gamespy API and relatively few users, the load was minimal and Gamespy didn't need to do anything special to support the game. By charging tens of thousands of pounds Glu is trying to maximize their profits and milk everyone dry by charging rates many times the cost of providing the service. If they want tens of thousands of pounds for Snipe Elite, I can only imagine what they're charging EA for the earlier Battlefield games, which are far more active.

In any case, this is a shameful end to the Gamespy service. While it hasn't been relevant for new games for some time, it deserved better than to go out like this, with a vulture gaming company shaking down developers for every last cent they can get.

Dev @ Blue's News wrote:

Article on Acquisition wrote:There will be no disruption in service to GameSpy's current customers and contracts as a result of this acquisition by Glu.

If rebellion has a contract about the service they could probably sue to get it back on, especially since they can show they said publicly it wouldn't change.

The deals developers made with Gamespy depended on the developer, but from what I understand they'd sign a multi-year contract to cover the first couple of years of the game (when it would be the busiest) before reverting to a year-to-year basis. As usage for any given game dwindled, Gamespy kept their rates low, which meant even for a small number of users it was practically pocket change to keep paying Gamespy to continue supporting the game. Most likely Rebellion's 2012 contract has expired, and they are unwilling to pay Glu's rates for the next year. So there would be nothing to sue over; the contract ended and then Glu jacked up the rates immensely.

silvaril wrote:Love is Love, God is God and I am still Living a Lifetime

Disclaimer:The views of any individual may not necessarily represent those of "God"(tm)

Too bad STEAM or some other company did not buy the assets and then run a few servers with that particular code to allow games requiring the service to still be viable... Does not take much overhead to let a server run that is already running solid code.

At least there is still a way to play multiplayer. Some games have ONLY Gamespy available. That's why direct connect or LAN mode should always be an option. Another third party fiasco along the same lines: I still have some games that I can't play after Direct2Drive got bought by Gamefly. The innocent game buyer hurt by someone else through no fault of their own. I hope this isn't becoming a trend in the gaming industry.